By Mandy Tjew&hyphen;A&hyphen;Sin

Dutch Data Prize 2016

August 5th, 2016

Last week, I received word that the EEG data that I had made openly available has been entered for the Dutch Data Prize 2016 by the editor of Data in Brief. According to their website, the Dutch Data Prize is awarded to researchers who make an extra effort to document their data and make it available to others. Sounds like a really cool initiative! I was very (pleasantly) surprised (and a bit proud) to learn that my dataset may have been of value to other people:

It’s one of the most highly downloaded datasets from those published in the Data in Brief journal. On average it’s downloaded over 50 times/month from ScienceDirect only, indicating that it’s very valuable to the research community. Next to it, this is a very special dataset which showcases a novel solution of knowledge dissemination and data documentation, making it easy to discover, access and reuse. This solution combines: (1) 171 data files deposited in a trustworthy digital repository (DANS); (2) the description of this dataset published in the open access data journal Data in Brief explaining how the data was acquired; and (3) the full length research article published in the journal Neuroscience Letters presenting the actual results of the data analysis and main outcomes of this study.The data files and the data descriptor are publicly available, under CC-0 and CC-BY licenses respectively. The data files were curated by the DANS data curators and the data article was peer-reviewed by the domain experts. The combination of peer review and data curation provides a double quality stamp and ensures that the data is well documented, collected in accordance with the state of the art methods and protocols and that data has potential for reuse.

I know there will be some very strong entries, so I don’t expect a nomination. But, finding out about the potential value of my research data really cemented my desire to make all my data, and if possible all my papers, available Open Access. For those interested, the award ceremony is held November 9th at NWO in The Hague. The Dutch Data Prize 2016 consists of a sculpture and 5k to be spent on making data accessible.